Manure, my favorite topic of conversation (particularly at parties), is pretty awesome. It has been a staple crop fertilizer virtually since humankind began cultivating its own food. It’s everything synthetic fertilizer wishes it could be: Chock full of nutrients, it is — assuming you raise animals —...

Dear Santa, December is already here, and though I’m sure you must be busy running the rush orders through your workshop and checking those lists of “naughty” and “nice” and loading up the sleigh, I’m afraid that we’ve been so caught up with putting our gardens to...

If you’ve been wondering, “Whatever happened to those Victory Gardens you Ethicureans were tending?” — well, truth is, after that last big burst of excitement with tomatoes and such finally ripening, things have kind of gone downhill. It had to happen, of course. Let’s face it: in...

One Kansas City-area program had lots of sweet potato plants, while another had people who know how to cook sweet-potato greens. The two got together recently and showed off the culinary possibilities to a gathering of people interested in good food and sustainable agriculture. The result was an array of...

These days, everywhere you look, a new industry or service is marketed as “greening” itself — making it more environmentally conscious by reducing its carbon footprint or assuaging its corporate guilt through any number of steps. Usually that’s considered a good thing. But an article in...

Summer’s heat has finally reached us all, even our northernmost Ethicurean colleagues, and if you wonder why you haven’t heard much from many of us — well, you can imagine us with dirt on our hands and knees, working away in our Victory Gardens as our crops take off. And since the work never...

Every summer I look forward to each crop coming into its own, and I dream about all the wonderful dishes I’ll cook or the preserves I’ll make for winter. I’m even learning to appreciate some produce that gets less love than the usual tomatoes and beans and corn: every July, for example, I...

By Debra Eschmeyer There’s something about caring for a tomato plant that brings out every nurturing instinct in me. I am literally in constant motion during peak season, in a long, choreographed dance of pruning, irrigating, mulching, deworming, and finally, harvesting — my own version of tomato salsa. But...

On July 17, the Food and Drug Administration lifted its warning about raw tomatoes after its investigation determined that tomatoes currently in the marketplace are free of the Salmonella Saintpaul strain that has sickened over 1,200 people across 42 states. Now their attention is turning to raw jalapeño...

Lately we’ve seen a bumper crop of articles extolling the virtues of gardening. Sure, it’s a great way to reduce your food costs at a time when those prices are experiencing rapid growth spurts. But it’s more than that: gardens can be environmentally friendly and even (in our dreams,...

Did you know your great-grandparents grew up peeling an entirely different kind of banana than we do now? They ate the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone apparently liked much better than today’s ubiquitous Cavendish. What happened? Writes Dan Koeppel — author of “Banana: The Fate of...

While trying to base my entire diet on food that is grown, raised, and produced close to where I live in Montreal, there are a few items that I have decided simply to eat regardless of their source. At the top of that list sits the banana. I love bananas. Whether they are in my cereal, blended into my...